September Apprentice of the Month - Borislav Chachov
We are happy to announce that the winner of the LDN Apprentice of the Month is Borislav @ Real Links!
Nominated by LDN Business Administration Skills Coach, Steve Bond - Borislav is coming towards the end of his apprenticeship and will be offered a full-time contract once he completes!
We received some awesome feedback from Borislav’s line manager and Business Development Manager at Real Links, Richard O’Donavan, which you can read below!
Borislav’s Skills Coach:
Although he has been on furlough since March, he has shown huge resilience recently to complete his portfolio (awaiting ICT result). Bobby has had to battle some personal loss, as well as the issue of furlough, but has been determined, shown huge commitment to his course, taking a lot of feedback on board en route.
Bobby has also been recognised by his Director, who will be offering him a permanent position once his Apprenticeship concludes successfully.
Borislav’s Line Manager
Energy: You have met Bobby and I’m sure you have seen first-hand the energy he brings to any room he walks into. He has made more friends in our office building than the rest of us combined, always saying hello to everyone and taking the time to get to know those around him. He arrives early and greets everyone with a smile each morning. As we are a start-up sometimes the job gets ahead of the human element of working with other people but Bobby always brought you back down to earth and his energy kept us all engaged and working together. He was sorely missed during furlough and we are all a little brighter for having him back.
Enthusiasm: Considering what Bobby was doing day one and what was expected of him in this role to now is night and day and that is because of the enthusiasm he brought to each task that was asked of him. Generating leads can be monotonous but he never complained, he took the time to research industries and companies in his own time, he asked to have access to the tracking dashboards so he could watch the lifecycle of a lead from prospect to sale all so he could learn to do his job better. We started to give him more responsibility and broader reach across sales and marketing and he continues to progress and grow and drives the office with him.
Willingness To Learn: Bobby took to working in a start-up incredibly well. It is often hard to give someone the time during the day due to the way things come up but Bobby is always listening and writing things down. We added an additional 15 minutes to our sales team meetings each week just so he could ask all the questions he had gathered and I don’t think we ever kept it to just 15 minutes. His is fiercely ambitious and this comes across in how he learns both directly and through watching those around him.
Ability To Take Feedback: This was one of Bobby’s first roles and he made some mistakes at the beginning. His enthusiasm and desire to progress sometimes overshadowed his attention to detail but he was always willing to listen and learn from his mistakes. He takes responsibility for all that he does and he genuinely wants to do better so he takes every bit of feedback he can. It is due to this that he has come so far in the time he has had with us.
Propensity To Take Action: Bobby has changed our perception of what we thought his role could be. His initial targets were not enough and we had to expand the scope of what he did within days of him starting. He took an interest in our social media, asked questions and learned in his own time about improving our engagement and is now managing a part of our online outreach. He wanted to do some call listening to better understand the product and sales cycle and he began taking notes and asking to practise pitching and now he regularly communicates with customers over the phone to book in and confirm meetings and can pitch our product confidently and accurately.
He has taken control of our lead gen in a way we didn’t think realistic. He research’s, sources, uploads, sends and tracks all leads going through the system with minimum oversight. He is always ahead of his target and through his drive to succeed he has increased the amount of prospecting we do as a company. The fact that someone so young and new to the industry has achieved this through sheer ambition and force of will has been really something to see and has had a hugely positive impact on the business.
Our runner up for this month is Jess Stevens at Bloomsbury, who was nominated by Publishing Skills Coach, Vimbai! With feedback provided by Jess’s line manager, Joanne Murphy.
Jess’s Skills Coach:
I’m always impressed by Jess’s determination to overcome the obstacles that arise in her working life and on the apprenticeship, and to push through, find her place and thrive in her role. She has really shone this past month – hence my nominating her for the second time this year.
Jess’s line manager:
Jess has shown her positive energy whilst working tirelessly on generating backlist POD covers of late, focussing on that when some other backlist activity dried up during the lockdown, which is not the most creative or fun of tasks but she has made the effort to keep the pace of these up, producing in significant numbers to really make progress on a daunting backlog.
Jess is particularly enthusiastic about the creative aspects of the industry and is keen to take any opportunity to brush up on her design skills, including working on some frontlist cover designs during her second project. But particularly impressive is she is also eager to assist with other parts of the business that are less in line with her creative skills and leanings and is always asking questions and reaching out to colleagues across the business to learn more about their work including production-editorial, finance, rights etc.